


The One Left Behind

by onlydawn



Category: Dragon Age II
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-27
Updated: 2013-01-27
Packaged: 2017-11-27 01:36:27
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,559
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/656569
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/onlydawn/pseuds/onlydawn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She cannot lose what she never had. Her life was never hers to own.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The One Left Behind

She has never known her father, who disappeared one day when she was but three. Her memories are fickle and like to paint the picture of a man with kind eyes, though she does not know to this day what those are; those look upon her only know her as 'knife-ears' and 'servant girl', for though she is not a slave any longer, she still has no place among the people she serves.

Her mother's visage is clearer in her mind, her body thin and face beautiful, but so many of those memories are diminished by the sickness that overtook her not so long ago. The illness ravaged her body and left it weak and brittle. Once, she was full of life and strong, arms toned from the housework she did for her master. She remembers a time when even their cramped room beneath the kitchen was considered a home, when her mother did her best to make it a haven for her two children. 

Even that has been lost, a contract broken by a battle won and a favor granted in its wake. 

Freedom is a loss she never suffered, for she could not lose something she never had. Even without the shackles of 'master' or 'mistress', she has never had a life to call her own. The hovel she lives in also belongs to three other elves, servants like she is, who pay for the luxury of a cot with their services to the owner of the building. Her clothes have been given to her by the man she works for simply because he refuses to allow her to clean his home wearing what she had before. It is worth three months' pay alone and she will have to wash and return it should she ever leave his service. 

There is one thing alone that is hers, a gift she has hidden from the world. Magic has come too late in her life to bring her family status and wealth, her talents too unrefined to save her mother from her long sickness. It is not enough to elevate her to the upper class and she is not strong enough to use it against those who would hurt her. But it is hers and no one else's, something that cannot be taken away from her so long as Tevinter stands firm against the old teachings of Andraste herself. 

She scoffs at the idea of the Maker. He has never helped her and has never thought to spare her family from hardship. Why should she supplicate herself now for his whims? Why bother to pray when she can practice, when she can hone her skills in the hope that one day she can leave the underbelly of Minrathous and take ship.

It is a hopeless dream, she tells herself, but it is what she clings to in her darker moments; it keeps her scrubbing floors and bowing sweetly to her master and his guests, all the while wishing that she could reach inside of him and tear him asunder if only she had the strength to do so. It is a dream she will keep so long as her pain is fresh, so long as she is alone.

"You've lost so much," he croons to her while she washes the floors, dress pulled up over her knees and her hair tied back messily. He lounges in her master's chair as if he owns the lavish grandeur around them, and perhaps he could have at one time. "I've lost something important to me too."

Danarius has lost nothing but his dignity, forced as he is to hunt down the only thing he ever had worth keeping.

"Perhaps you could help with that."

She dares to meet his eyes. "I have a contract with Master Ahriman, messere," she says, cold as the ice that gathers on the pads of her fingertips. "Should you wish to buy my services, you would have speak to him first."

His chuckle grates down her spine and he stands, stepping down to her. "But what is a favor between two Magisters? Surely you and I could come to an agreement." His smile is not kind. "If you wish to play the game of magecraft, little one, you must learn to barter first." The incline of his head indicates her hands and she curls them into fists, playing the part of the lowly, insolent elf very well. "Some come into their gift later in life but it does not negate their potential. You can be so much more than this."

Her messy reflection in the washed floor shames her.

 _You took him from me._ "I want him back."

His smile widens. "Then we will find him for you."

 

He does not teach her magic until Hadriana sends word that she has found his Fenris and Varania recognizes his hesitance for what it is; he will not invest in the same stock his former property comes from for fear of being burned. She counts it as a victory, for she knows she is only a pawn in his game and little else. But he is hers as well, her only ticket to seeing her brother once more. Even should Danarius fail to capture his little wolf, he will have taught her enough for her to survive on her own. 

Slowly, but surely, the prospect of a life of her own becomes real to her. 

Hope drives her spirit, even once word reaches them that Hadriana has been killed. Danarius hardly seems deterred by his apprentice's demise.

"Sometimes, Varania," he tells her one day, "sacrifices must be made for the greater good."

She will take Hadriana's place. He will groom her into whatever he desires, a puppet for his own needs. He feeds her and introduces her to the culture of the Magisters, takes her to their small gatherings and lets her listen in on the politics of his - _their_ \- people. She is never allowed to stay for long; he gives her a taste of what is to come and no more, leaving her to salivate. He hopes she will beg. She does not.

It is a game to them, a battle of wills, and she can tell he is impressed when she refuses to grovel at his feet. "So much like him," he admonishes. "It's quaint." She is no domesticated dog, no churl that will kiss his boots. Though her voice may be soft and she knows when to avert her eyes, her spirit has never broken. This will only give him reason to try harder, she assumes, should that be his true goal. But Danarius offers her a kind hand and never hits her, never attempts to hurt her intentionally. He treats her as he would any other Magister and does not hold back when he teaches her a new spell. She is not a slave or a servant to him. She is an adversary.

It pleases her more than it should.

The letter arrives one day, two years after Hadriana's fall, with a small pouch full of coin. The words are scrawled and childlike, a map included in the wrapped parchment. Kirkwall is circled in ink. 

"He means for you to join him," Danarius tells her as if she is slow, and perhaps it is difficult for her to comprehend the reality of the paper in her hand. Her brother. He knows where she is. "Clever thing."

Though he insists it is through Fenris' skill that he found her, she knows his game too well to believe such a lie. Danarius has set the playing field. He wants his toys to dance for him. 

She casts her die. "I want to see him." 

 

She has one week to draw him out. He won't give her any more than that, even though his prize is within reach. He cannot afford failure here. He has risked too much and so has she. Varania will be useless to him if Fenris is not caught. 

The life of a servant is too bleak to go back to. She has come too far to return to that life. She cannot.

A table in the back is where she occupies herself, hands folded on the wooden top. She wrings them again and again, uncertain, frightened, and her eyes go to the door every time it opens. He does not come the first day, nor the next, nor the following. Danarius grows impatient. He stalks the upper rooms and lets his temper out at night in the safety of their cabin at the docks. He threatens her and she is a slave again, face pressed against a wall and a switch taken to her back. He never strikes her but his words are thorned and painful as he reminds her that this a game they both have a stake in.

She has not forgotten.

The fourth and fifth day pass. He does not come. Even at night, he does not approach the establishment, and she worries that he is no longer in the city. Perhaps he has gone elsewhere, looking for her. Or perhaps he has given up.

On the sixth day, the door opens and she sees him. Gone is the raven black hair from his youth, replaced by the stark white of a wolf's coat. He is so much taller, still lanky, his body flush with the gift he won from his fights in the Tevinter arena.

"It really is you," she whispers.

"Varania?" 

She does not look at him. But she feels his green eyes on her, eyes she sees in every looking glass she's seen since he was taken from her side.

"I...I remember you," he begins, hesitant. "We played in our master's courtyard while Mother worked. You called me..."

 

_She learns quickly not to speak out of turn, to measure each word carefully. She thinks as each unspoken barb as another switch to her back, another punishment she wishes to avoid. Varania is quiet, eyes averted, the perfect slave._

_But Leto is brash and bold, with fiery eyes and a tongue that cannot be curbed. He is struck more times than can be counted and berated until his ears are ringing, and still he does not falter. Their mother scolds him in the dim light of their small room. "Oh, Leto, this is foolishness. Just do as you're told."_

_"I am not afraid," is his indignant reply, small tongue darting out to wipe up the blood on his lip._

__And why should you be? _his sister thinks and does not say, practicing patience from what has not frayed over the course of their long day. His rash behavior may just well get him killed. She wonders, sometimes, if that is not his intention._

 

"Leto." She rises, her eyes finally meeting his, albeit briefly. "That's your name." Her brother. And she has brought his captor to his only sanctuary.

"What's wrong?" he asks her, and she hears _Why are you crying, sister?_ "Why are you so...?"

The woman at his side speaks for her. "It's a trap!"

She is helpless to warn him, to stop what has already started. "My little Fenris. Predictable, as always."

The pain in his eyes, the horror and the fear, give her back her voice. "I'm sorry it has come to this, Leto," she whispers and she means it. _Please, understand. I don't want this for us._

"You led him here!"

"Now, now, Fenris. Don't blame your sister. She did what any good Imperial citizen should." Betray anything for power. Sacrifice all who are necessary. That is the Magister way. Bile threatens to choke her and she shuts her eyes, turns her head away as Leto, poor Leto, steps up to fight. Danarius raises his staff and she ducks back behind his soldiers, refusing to help either side.

A fight breaks out, magic spiraling every which way. The girl Leto has brought spins a staff and sports fire to her name; another man on the other side of the room calls up spirit magic to aid them. Leto is ghost-like, sinking his claws into his enemies and ripping them apart. Still she does not interfere, her body shaking as the fight finally ends. Danarius loses his heart and his life in one fell swoop, his corpse a bloody mess on the floor.

Her brother turns his eyes to her.

"I had no choice, Leto," she whispers and steps away.

"Stop calling me that!" is his returned snarl as he stands over her, the tips of his gauntlets dripping red.

She shakes her head, tries to make him understand. "He was going to make me his apprentice. I would have been a magister." _I could have been someone. I could have given us a life, freedom, status._

"You sold out your own brother to become a magister?" he growls in her face. The betrayal is fresh on his face, a blow to her gut.

 

_"I have but one request," he breathes, standing listless on the dais. Blood drips from the hands he clenches at his side._

_Danarius smiles. "Anything, my pet."_

_Leto looks back at his sister and grimaces. Their eyes lock. "Free my mother and my sister. They will be slaves no longer."_

_The uproar he causes is audible. There are barks of laughter and even a few whispers of dissent. But Danarius only raises a hand. "It is done. You have my word; your sister and mother will be freed on the morrow."_

_His eyes linger on her. "That is all I ask for."_

 

The old pain returns. "You have no idea what we went through. What I've had to do since mother died." The struggle to make ends meet, the lack of jobs, the scraping she had to do to try and make their mother comfortable in her final days. She remembers the degradation she underwent, how she groveled and pleaded to be given a chance. No one wants a bargaining piece that once belonged to Danarius' most loyal and powerful bodyguard. Freed, she is useless and unwanted. As a slave, she at least would be a commodity.

She is not her own person. She is nothing. "This was my only chance." Their only chance. Hers. For Leto always had the better bargain; his pain gave way to usefulness, to power, and to status. He held worth in his very veins.

Magic is all she's had. And it, like all magic in the Imperium, has thrived on her hatred and her pain.

"And now you have no chance at all." 

He glows like starlight as he approaches her, glistening claw outstretched. "Don't do this. Please make him stop!" she cries to the woman at his side. She says nothing.

Soulful green eyes search hers, his look one of pity and anguish. "I would have given you everything," he whispers.

Her arms fall to her sides. "No," she murmurs, Varania's eyes meeting his. "You have nothing to give that I want." She has had enough of hatred and cruelty to last her until the end of her days. "And I have nothing for you that you will not despise in turn." _Forgive me, Leto. I thought I could be better than them._

The cut is sharp and agonizing, her vision full of green and white and then nothing, darkness swallowing her senses.


End file.
